Madame? Made­moi­selle? Miss? Mrs? Most Eu­ro­pean lan­guages offer nu­mer­ous ways to greet a lady. But these salu­ta­tions are far from neu­tral. They are all preg­nant with im­pli­ca­tions of power re­la­tions, age and mar­i­tal sta­tus. They serve to de­fine the dy­namic of the in­ter­ac­tion. As such, many coun­tries are sim­ply doing away with them.